Two men respond to David's victory over Goliath, and the difference between them fills the rest of this chapter and much of the book. Jonathan is the crown prince, heir to everything David's rise threatens. If anyone had reason to resent the shepherd's sudden fame, it was Jonathan. Instead 1"the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." The man with the most to lose is the first to love David without reservation.
Jonathan's love shows in what he does next. 4"Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt." A prince's robe was more than clothing. It marked him as heir, as a crown or scepter would. To hand it over with his weapons was to say with his body what his lips had not yet said: I am giving you what was mine to inherit. Jonathan had almost certainly heard that Saul's dynasty was finished. Rather than fight to keep what was slipping away, he gives it away first, freely, to the man God had chosen in his place.
Saul's response is entirely different. David's success at first pleases him, and Saul sets him over the men of war. Then the women come out singing what was likely an ordinary victory song with its usual poetic doubling: 7"Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands." Saul hears something else. 8"What more can he have but the kingdom?" 9"Saul eyed David from that day on."
That sentence marks the turn. Watching becomes suspicion, and suspicion becomes violence remarkably fast. The next day the harmful spirit that David's music once soothed comes on Saul while David plays the same lyre, and Saul hurls his spear at him, twice, hoping to pin him to the wall. The music that brought peace in chapter 16 is, by chapter 18, the very moment he tries to kill the one making it.
The narrator names what has happened: 12"Saul was afraid of David because the LORD was with him but had departed from Saul." Saul sees the truth more clearly than almost anyone in the book, and the seeing does nothing to change his heart. He knows David has what he has lost and cannot rejoice in it. He tries to manage the threat, sending David where he might fall, promoting him away from his own presence, and every move backfires. 14"David had success in all his undertakings, for the LORD was with him." The harder Saul pushes David away, the more the nation loves him.
Jonathan and Saul show two postures toward a blessing that has landed on someone else. Jonathan sees God's favor resting on David and gives away his claim gladly, because his love was never rooted in what David could do for him. Saul sees the same favor and cannot stop calculating what it costs him. One heart could rejoice at another's blessing without needing to possess it, and the other could only fear it.
Jonathan's self-emptying love, giving away the robe, the armor, and the claim to a throne for another's sake, reaches its fullest shape in someone Jonathan never met. Paul writes that Christ, though in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, and that he "made himself nothing" (Philippians 2:6-7). Jonathan gave up an earthly throne he was never promised to keep. Christ gave up a heavenly one he had every right to hold.
Ask whose blessing you have found it hard to celebrate.
Prayer
Father, teach us Jonathan's kind of love, glad to see your blessing rest on someone else without needing to hold on to what we think is ours. Guard us from Saul's kind of watching, the slow corrosion of an envy that sees your favor and cannot rejoice in it. Thank you for Christ, who emptied himself completely for us, holding nothing back that love required him to give. In Jesus' name, amen.